Michael Moore leads audience of Broadway play to Trump Tower

August 16, 2017

FILE - In this May 17, 2017 file photo, filmmaker Michael Moore attends the Turner Network 2017 Upfront presentation at The Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York. Moore led the audience of his Broadway play to Trump Tower to protest President Donald Trump’s comments about the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va, on Tuesday, Aug. 15. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Michael Moore has led the audience of his Broadway play to Trump Tower to protest President Donald Trump’s comments about the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

On Facebook, Moore urged people to join him at the tower following Tuesday night’s performance of his one-man show “The Terms of My Surrender” to “nonviolently express our rage.”

After the play, the 63-year-old Oscar-winning filmmaker, commentator and liberal activist is seen on a Facebook Live video leading a group of people on buses to the tower, where the president is currently staying for the first time since his inauguration. Moore was joined by actor Mark Ruffalo.

During the bus ride, Ruffalo, using a bullhorn, led the group in chants including “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA” and encouraged people on the street to join them at the tower. Hundreds of demonstrators have been gathering there since Trump arrived Monday night.

Earlier Tuesday, during an impromptu news conference in the building’s lobby, Trump declared that “there is blame on both sides” for the violence in Virginia, appearing to once again equate the actions of white supremacist groups and those protesting them.

Moore described the president’s comments as “just awful, disgusting.”

White nationalists, neo-Nazis and other far-right extremists assembled last Saturday to protest a decision by the city of Charlottesville to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when a man plowed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters.

Outside Trump Tower Tuesday night, Moore and Ruffalo held a candlelight vigil and urged the crowd to never forget Heyer and make sure she didn’t “die in vain.”

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This story has been corrected to show that Trump made the comments earlier Tuesday, not Monday.